The first rule of writing is to use fewer words than you think you need to. I violate this rule every time I put my fingers on the keyboard. (There’s always tomorrow.)
Last month, the day before Thanksgiving, I was pumping gas into my car, or trying to, anyway. After a few tries, the gizmo still wasn’t working. I was annoyed. I turned to step over the hose and head into the station to get an attendant. Suddenly I heard an eerie...
I’ve just spent a week, more or less, doing what is for me the hardest part of writing: starting. I’m working on a new book for teens (will say more about what it is soon), and need to have it done in a few weeks. But that’s not the hard part. The hard part is...
One summer, when I was a kid (maybe seven, or eight) I read Fred Gipson’s 1956 classic Old Yeller. I hadn’t seen the movie version. (Come to think of it, I never did see it.) When I got to the end, when Travis Coates has to shoot his beloved dog, I cried and cried....
“Musician, mentor, friend.” That was the headline of a story in the Nov. 14 edition of the Rochester, NY Democrat & Chronicle. The story continued: “Noted as a scholar and a gentleman . . . the late Alfred Mann is credited with bringing attention to early music....
